The majestic entrance hall of Glenmorangie's headquarters serves as a glitzy showcase for its premium brands, with bottles and historical artefacts displayed in immaculately-polished cabinets.

But, there was nothing at all to indicate Drambuie's presence at the plant until chief executive Phil Parnell takes us to the top of the staircase where the remnants of the whisky liqueur's 270-year history is consigned to a single display case.

However, things may be about to change as Glenmorangie is disposing of the site in Broxburn,West Lothian, to concentrate on its premium brands at a new purpose-built facility to be constructed in Livingston.

For Parnell, the move could be a real opportunity for Drambuie.

He said: "Our relationship with Glenmorangie has been going since 2001 when Drambuie closed its facility at Kirkliston, and the agreement was good for both par-ties at the time because there was a lot of surplus capacity, and consolidation made a lot of sense for both parties in order to bring down costs.

"The situation now of course is LVMH, which now owns Glenmorangie have a super-premium brand strategy and they don't want Glenmorangie doing any blended whisky or third party bottling for other brands, so we were told at the end of last year we'd have to find a new home.

"After researching the bottling operations in Scotland, we found Morrison Bowmore to be the best fit for us, and we're really looking forward to working with them."

Drambuie will move to Glasgow in 2010 which marks another stage in Parnell's transformation of the business.

Since taking over in 2004 he has brought Drambuie back from the brink of collapse to being profitable.

When Parnell accepted a role as nonexecutive director after his successful turnaround of the Dunlop-Slazenger brand, Drambuie was in dire straits from a 30-year downward spiral.

And after only a few months on the board, Calum MacKinnon, then chief executivestepped down and all eyes then fell on Parnell to take over the reigns and save the company.

First up was reducing the £20million debt through a series of disposals including the company's famous art collection for £3.5m and its Hilltown House headquarters for another £3.5m.

He said: "Hilltown House was of absolutely no use as office accommodation and was very expensive to upkeep.

"A lot of the Jacobite Glass collection was held there, which meant we also had security personnel, curators, gardeners, painters and a whole infrastructure in place to sustain an impractical luxury which had nothing to do with either promoting or saving this brand.

"Then there was the London headquarters at St James' in central London, which we were paying £60 a square foot for, and this was long after all big drinks makers had moved away from the square mile of Mayfair to cut costs.

"We still have three years left on the lease, but at £60 a square foot, it seemed to me to be an entirely unnecessary expense. So we sub-let the building in 2006 and moved to new premises just beside Heathrow Airport."

A return to operating profit in 2007/08 showed the strategy was paying off.

Parnell said: "When I first joined I saw quite quickly the business was weak on a number of fronts. Far too much time and money had been spent diversifying into businesses with absolutely no synergy to the core product.

"We had Caithness Glass, the Glenvarigill car showrooms, which we still have a little bit of overhang in terms of liability for, even today.

"It was a classic example of moving away from the core business and moving into new business ventures which may well be seductive but aren't bringing any synergies to your existing business and no transferable skills to drive these ventures.

"On the drink side itself, in the early 2000s Drambuie launched Drambuie Cream and for three years the whole marketing budget in the US was going on Drambuie Cream, while the mother brand was left languishing with no investment.

"The problem of course was Drambuie was going head to head with Baileys - one of Diageo's top five brands - but without the marketing muscle, it was never going to succeed, and the family was forced to withdraw the product in 2004."

After the non-core businesses had been stripped out, and Drambie Cream has been consigned to history, Parnell set about stemming the continuing drop in the core product's global sales.

He said: "The brand had lost 40 per cent of its sales volume over a 30-year period and from 2006-08 we managed to stabilise the global volumes, but there is still along, long way to go before we bring it back into growth again. r od a git "The first step was stemming the decline because those older consumers we rely upon now will slowly taper off, so we had to look at how we could encourage people to come back to Drambuie and give it a try.

ers f o re "That meant moving away from the image of Drambuie as being one of those drinks you havearound a cosy fireplace at Hogmanay. Thereis nothing wrong with the inner truth of this product, which is why it has been around for 270 years, so wehave focused on building a relationship with the 28-35 year olds and deriving amarketing drive which was relevant to them and their lifestyle. e ose ceat his so onving n to "We also launched Drambuie Pursuits, uits, and the aim was to create a communications bridge to the 28-35-year old target market whilst staying true to the brand.

"The Pursuit is a backwards recreation of the journey of Bonnie Prince Charlie when he fled from Colodden, but going from Skye to Inverness, with everything from high speed boating, archery, mountain climbing, ab-sailing, white water rafting, and canoeing.

"This is now an international event, and last year we had teams from Canada, the United States, Brazil, Russia, Germany, Holland and the UK.

"Last year in the UK alone we had 4,000 people apply to enter the event, with around 1,000 team applications from the US and another 1,000 from the basket of other countries where we have strong market position.

"The event costs us around half a mil-liopounds to set up, which in terms of the overall worldwide coverage we get from it, is a pretty good investment."

Drambuie has also been successfully marketing a number of new long drink ideas with premium bars and celebrity bartenders globally.

Parnell said: "There is one school of thought which says 'don't mess with my Drambuie' but those same people are very surprised to find they like Drambuie as a long drink or a mixed drink too.

"Over the last couple of summers we've been involved with the major retailers in their summer drinks promotions, with Tesco last year and Sainsbury's this year. If we had gone to see a buyer for Sainsbury's in 2004 and said we wanted to be part of their summer drinks promotions, they would have laughed us out of the office, but we have come a long way since then.

Another aspect of the rejuvenation strategy for Drambuie was to bring the packaging up-to-date.

Parnell said: "When Drambuie was really motoring through the 1950s right through to the 1970s the after-dinner drinks market was at its height, and during that period 40 per cent of all sales were coming from the US. But the only change Drambuie had made from the 1970s to 2004 was drinking Drambuie on ice as an alternative to drinking in neat after dinner, and other liqueurs found a new niche for their brand which Drambuie had failed to do."

Drambuie's sales have now stabilised at around 320,000 cases globally each year, though are still some way off the 450,000 cases it was selling at its peak.

However, new markets are emerging with strong sales in Russia, and plans to move into India and China.

A new Drambuie premium product, aimed at the Duty Free market, will be launched later this year, though details of the format are being kept secret until the TFWAWorld Exhibition in October.

Parnell said: "We still think we should be able to put 50 per cent volume back on this brand, from 300,000-odd cases to 450,000 cases, and that might take the best part of five years, but we are confident we can achieve those figures.We have the profitability back, the value of the business is going up, so all we need to do now is to have the belief in the brand and bring in the right, young talent into this company to take it forward.

Since I joined the company, we have been investing 30 per cent of our net sales value on marketing, and my aspirations to get a return on sales of 18 per cent, and we were able to start paying dividends again in 2006 - year before we had committed to doing so.

"For the next year, we'll be increasing the marketing spend to 40 per cent of our net sales, which will no doubt give the appearance we have destroyed our profitability.

"But we have the cash and we're not that concerned with the profit and loss figures because we are a cash rich company and our shareholders are enjoying good dividends again."